And in Marvel's sequel to the cartoon, the X-Men fought back
Things Only Adults Notice in X-Men: The Animated Series
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After much anticipation, X-Men '97, a direct sequel to 1990's X-Men: The Animated Series, arrives on Disney Plus this week. But this isn't the first time Marvel has dusted off the old series and revived it for a nostalgic new millennium.
Marvel Comics itself took a turn with X-Men '92, published in 2015 and technically a Secret Wars tie-in (but don't worry about it). For 92, writers Chad Bowers and Chris Sims and artist Scott Koblish had to figure out how to make a comic book story that felt like a beloved cartoon based closely on the 90s comics, without just replicating the 90s comics themselves. X-Men: The Animated Series definitely had its own feel – but blocky animation doesn't translate to stills, and once you put character designs ripped straight from the comics back on the page, they just look… like from series. Rogue and Gambit's outrageous accents? From the comics. Storm's opera diction? The series.
